Ressources

Giao Lien : Women of the Communist Underground : Voices from the Vietnam War [2012]

Virginia Morris & Clive Hills

A unique study of the female spies who under­mi­ned the American offen­sive in Vietnam, com­plete with pre­viously unpu­bli­shed maps sho­wing former safe-houses, secret army camps, and routes taken across Indochina.

The Vietnam War is one of the most docu­men­ted conflicts in recent his­tory but one of the for­got­ten aspects of the war is the vast under­ground net­work of the Vietcong which ran from each American base straight to the war rooms of Hanoi. This book concen­tra­tes on the women who car­ried out this excee­din­gly dan­ge­rous work—k­nown as giao lien, trans­la­ted as « com­mu­ni­ca­tions and guides. » The giao lien were a mass under­ground orga­ni­za­tion lin­king mili­tary nerve-cen­ters to grass­roots Communist Party cells. Some were guer­rilla figh­ters, others were spies or links bet­ween indi­vi­dual agents. Their aim was to join Communist cells across Indochina directly to General Giap’s gene­ral head­quar­ters in Hanoi.

Using per­so­nal dia­ries, battle plans, and the help of Vietnamese vete­ran asso­cia­tions, the authors tell the sto­ries of these brave figh­ters : the woman who blew up a Boeing 707 in Honolulu in 1962 lea­ding to America thin­king that Vietnam would invade them on their soil, the woman who guided sol­diers during the Tet offen­sive and who for the first time reveals the offi­cial battle plans for it, and the now Vice Prime Minister of Vietnam who spent nine months in a « tiger cage » tor­ture cell.

Virginia Morris is the author of A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, The Road to Freedom, and Laos, Hidden Power Hidden Lives. Clive Hills began his career as a pro­fes­sio­nal pho­to­gra­pher in 1985, cove­ring the war in Afghanistan. He is the pho­to­gra­pher for A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Ideologies of Forgetting : Rape in the Vietnam War [2010]

Gina Marie Weaver

Rape has long been a part of war, and recent conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur demons­trate that it may be beco­ming an even more inte­gral stra­tegy of modern war­fare. In contrast to the media atten­tion to sexual vio­lence against women in these recent conflicts, howe­ver, the inci­dence and conse­quen­ces of rape in the Vietnam War have been lar­gely over­loo­ked. Using tes­ti­mony, oral accounts, lite­ra­ture, and film, Ideologies of Forgetting focu­ses on the rape and sexual abuse of Vietnamese women by U.S. sol­diers during the Vietnam War, and argues that the era­sure and eli­sion of these prac­ti­ces of sexual vio­lence in the U.S. popu­lar ima­gi­na­tion per­pe­tuate the vio­lent mas­cu­li­nity cen­tral to contem­po­rary U.S. mili­tary culture. Gina Marie Weaver claims that recog­ni­tion of this vio­lence is impor­tant not just for an accu­rate his­to­ri­cal record, but also to truly unders­tand the Vietnam vete­ran’s trauma, which often stems from his aggres­sion rather than his vic­ti­mi­za­tion.

“This is exactly the moment to take a new hard hook at the inci­dents of rape in the U.S. war in Vietnam—and its exten­ded conse­quen­ces for both the vic­tims and the per­pe­tra­tors of those rapes.” — Cynthia Enloe, author of Globalization and Militarism : Feminists Make the Link

“At a time when the phrase ‘sup­port our troops’ has become a natio­nal mantra, recog­ni­tion of how that sup­port was ena­bled and nar­ra­ti­vi­zed beco­mes even more impor­tant.” — Susan Jeffords, author of The Remasculinization of America : Gender and the Vietnam War

Gina Marie Weaver is Assistant Professor of English at Southern Nazarene University.

In his memoir Perfume Dreams, Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam recalls his ini­tial impres­sions of the United States as an eleven year old refu­gee. The son of a gene­ral in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam who fled Saigon with his parents in 1975, Lam won­de­red at the insu­la­rity of his American class­ma­tes’ lives. He remem­bers thin­king, “There were times… when I was very envious of you. History hap­pe­ned to others on TV and you—you who grew up where eve­ryone else wanted to live—­could always change the chan­nel. Other times I felt sorry for you. Your immu­nity from his­tory robs you of the awe and appre­cia­tion of seeing how its power­ful flow and surge can change eve­ryone, near or far” (1). In twen­tieth-cen­tury Vietnam, as in war­time Europe and other socie­ties rent by war, nobody was immune to the power­ful flow and surge of his­tory, which seared people’s pri­vate lives.

In Memory is Another Country : Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen tells the sto­ries of dozens of Vietnamese women in Australia whose lives were shaped by war, revo­lu­tion and exodus. Nguyen’s nar­ra­tors dis­cuss their child­hoods, fami­lies, mar­ria­ges, careers, losses and refu­gee expe­rien­ces.

The book’s haun­ting post­war images are fami­liar in the lite­ra­ture of the Vietnamese dia­spora : “re-edu­ca­tion” expec­ted to last ten days but stret­ching into a night­mare of months and years ; entire fami­lies drow­ning at sea ; the cor­ro­sive effects of forced exile on family life ; and the ever pre­sent year­ning for an irre­vo­ca­bly lost home­land.

What makes this book remar­ka­ble is the number of sto­ries that it col­lects—­the author inter­vie­wed forty-two women over the course of a three year oral his­tory pro­ject—and its focus on women. Despite the abun­dant docu­men­ta­tion of the Vietnamese refu­gee expe­rience, Nguyen points out, nar­ra­ti­ves from the women of South Vietnam are lar­gely absent from the record. Cultural cons­traints, the pres­sure to pro­vide for their fami­lies in coun­tries of reset­tle­ment, the lack of public fora, and the impulse to bury past sor­rows under silence are all fac­tors that have kept women from tel­ling their sto­ries.

Nguyen sets out to remedy this absence, in detail and with com­pas­sion. She orga­ni­zes her nar­ra­tors’ sto­ries into the­ma­tic chap­ters on loss, sis­te­rhood, female sol­diers, war, mar­riage to forei­gners and return to Vietnam. Each chap­ter high­lights bet­ween two and four women. Nguyen lets her nar­ra­tors—i­den­ti­fied only by first name—s­peak for them­sel­ves, using long, unin­ter­rup­ted blocks of quo­ta­tion. Their nar­ra­ti­ves are bra­cke­ted by Nguyen’s com­men­tary on his­to­ri­cal contexts and common themes, and over­laid with theo­ries of trauma and memory. The theo­re­ti­cal aspect of the book focu­ses on the cons­truc­tion of memory after trau­ma­tic expe­rien­ces, and the emo­tio­nal, cultu­ral and gen­de­red aspects of making memory. Against this back­ground, the book’s title takes on two mea­nings : memory is ano­ther coun­try, the lost home­land of South Vietnam, but memory is also a coun­try in itself, where the “memo­rys­cape” is peo­pled with living and dead rela­ti­ves and contou­red with vil­la­ges and city bou­le­vards frozen in the past. [Read more :] http://asia­pa­ci­fic.anu.edu.au/newma...

‘You must write your life story !’
The man drew a last whiff of smoke from his bur­ning
ciga­rette-end, threw it on the dusty floor, then angrily cru­shed
it under the toe of his sandal and disap­pea­red.
And I recal­led my life.

– Nam Phuong

With these words, Nam Phuong under­ta­kes to recons­truct and retell her life story – and the suc­ces­sion of events that led to her first failed attempt to escape from the newly crea­ted Socialist Republic of Vietnam as a ‘boat-person’ in 1977, an attempt that resul­ted in impri­son­ment and inter­ro­ga­tion by the Vietnamese autho­ri­ties. The fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 formed the pre­lude to one of the lar­gest and most visi­ble dia­spo­ras in the late twen­tieth cen­tury. Approximately two mil­lion Vietnamese left their home­land as refu­gees and migrants and made new lives for them­sel­ves over­seas, prin­ci­pally in the four major coun­tries of reset­tle­ment in the West : the United States, Australia, Canada and France. The extent of the post-1975 Vietnamese dia­spora is a new phe­no­me­non in Vietnamese his­tory. Until then, Vietnamese com­mu­ni­ties over­seas, such as the one in France, had repre­sen­ted a very small, if influen­tial, mino­rity. Although war and poli­ti­cal unrest had resul­ted in wides­pread inter­nal dis­pla­ce­ments within Vietnam, most nota­bly fol­lo­wing par­ti­tion in 1954, the coun­try had not pre­viously seen any­thing resem­bling the mass exodus of the late 1970s and the 1980s. This exodus has in turn led to a body of lite­ra­ture by Vietnamese in the West.[1] Vietnamese women, in par­ti­cu­lar, have pro­du­ced a gro­wing number of dia­spo­ric nar­ra­ti­ves in English and in French,[2] in which they have arti­cu­la­ted their expe­rience of war and loss, trauma and sur­vi­val, as well as the pro­cess of decultu­ra­tion and accultu­ra­tion in a new land.

The women’s nar­ra­ti­ves por­tray former lives in Vietnam during the French colo­nial period and later post-colo­nial years, as well as the devas­ta­ting conse­quen­ces of war. Trauma for these women encom­pas­ses not only the suf­fe­ring expe­rien­ced during war­time, it is also overw­hel­min­gly linked with loss—­loss of family and loved ones, home, coun­try, and what James Freeman terms ‘mea­ning­ful sour­ces of iden­tity.’[3] Women expe­rience not only dis­pla­ce­ment within their home­land because of war and poli­ti­cal ins­ta­bi­lity, but much more dra­ma­ti­cally and trau­ma­ti­cally, dis­pla­ce­ment to a foreign coun­try. In a col­lec­tion of essays entit­led Loss : The Politics of Mourning, David Eng and David Kazanjian note that ‘if loss is known only by what remains of it, then the poli­tics and ethics of mour­ning lie in the inter­pre­ta­tion of what remains – how remains are pro­du­ced and ani­ma­ted, how they are read and sus­tai­ned.’[4] Vietnamese women of the dia­spora trans­late this pro­cess of loss and grie­ving, of remem­be­ring and com­me­mo­ra­ting a world that ‘exists now only in memory’[5] by recrea­ting it in their accounts. Writing their nar­ra­ti­ves pro­vi­des them with a means of coming to terms with the tra­ge­dies and losses of their ear­lier lives, and of dea­ling with their pre­sent condi­tion as refu­gees and migrants. ‘In the tel­ling,’ as Judith Lewis Herman sug­gests, ‘the trauma story beco­mes a tes­ti­mony.’[6] The women’s life sto­ries not only elu­ci­date the cir­cum­stan­ces that led to their even­tual exile from Vietnam but also bring to life again an entire social and fami­lial fra­me­work that fell apart with the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. They bear wit­ness to the past, and become in this way not only tes­ti­mo­nies to indi­vi­dual expe­rience, but col­lec­ti­vely tes­ti­mo­nies to a lost way of life and a lost coun­try. [Read more :] http://inter­sec­tions.anu.edu.au/iss...

Intersections : Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context,
Issue 11, August 2005

Vietnamese Women at War - Fighting for Ho Chi Minh and the Revolution [1999]

Sandra C. Taylor

For as long as the Vietnamese people fought against foreign ene­mies, women were a vital part of that strug­gle. The vic­tory over the French at Dien Bien Phu is said to have invol­ved hun­dreds of thou­sands of women, and many of the names in Viet Cong unit ros­ters were female. These women were living out the ancient saying of their coun­try, « When war comes, even women have to fight. »

Women from Hanoi and the coun­try­side fought along­side their male coun­ter­parts in both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese mili­tary in their wars against the South Vietnamese govern­ment and its French and American allies from 1945 to 1975. Sandra Taylor now draws on inter­views with many of these women and on an array of newly opened archi­ves to illu­mi­nate their moti­va­tions, expe­rien­ces, and contri­bu­tions—pre­sen­ting not cold facts but real people.

These women were the wives, mothers, daugh­ters, and sis­ters of men recrui­ted into mili­tary ser­vice ; and because the war lasted so long, women from more than one gene­ra­tion of the same family often par­ti­ci­pa­ted in the strug­gle. Some lear­ned to fire wea­pons and lay traps, or to serve as vil­lage patrol guards and intel­li­gence agents ; others were pro­pa­gan­dists and recrui­ters or helped keep the supply lines flo­wing.

Taylor rela­tes how this war for libe­ra­tion from foreign oppres­sors also libe­ra­ted Vietnamese women from cen­tu­ries of Confucian influence that had made them second-class citi­zens. She reveals that Communism’s pro­mise of free­dom from those stric­tu­res influen­ced their invol­ve­ment in the war, and also shares the irony that their sex gave them an advan­tage in battle or sub­ter­fuge over Western oppo­nents blin­ded by gender ste­reo­ty­pes.

As their coun­try conti­nues to moder­nize, Vietnamese Women at War pre­ser­ves the sto­ries of the « long-haired war­riers » while they remain alive and before the war fades from memory. By sho­wing that they were not vic­tims of war but active par­ti­ci­pants, it offers a wholly unique pers­pec­tive on that conflict. This rare study reveals much about gender roles and cultu­ral dif­fe­ren­ces and reminds us of the ever-pre­sent human dimen­sion of war.

“Taylor greatly enhan­ces our unders­tan­ding of the contri­bu­tions of Vietnam’s women, pro­vi­ding vivid accounts of trai­ning, deploy­ment, stra­tegy and tac­tics, pro­pa­ganda acti­vi­ties, sup­port ser­vi­ces, impri­son­ment and tor­ture, and other aspects of their invol­ve­ment in the war. Recommended for all levels.”—Choice

« From the ’long-haired army’ that car­ried pro­vi­sions through the jun­gles at Dien Bien Phu to the female ’tunnel rats’ at Cu Chi in the South, women were the unsung heroes of Vietnam’s war of natio­nal libe­ra­tion. Here, in this sym­pa­the­tic and some­ti­mes grip­ping account, is their untold story. Recommended. »—William J. Duiker, author of Sacred War : Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam

« It was common know­ledge among American sol­diers in Vietnam that women were some­ti­mes brave and even fero­cious figh­ters for the North. Now at last in Sandra Taylor’s fas­ci­na­ting Vietnamese Women at War this story has been told in depth. This book is a neces­sary piece in the com­plex puzzle of the Vietnam War. »—Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

« I am plea­sed to see more voices from Vietnamese women tel­ling their own sto­ries. As Sandra Taylor reveals, we don’t see our­sel­ves as vic­tims but rather as vic­tors and sur­vi­vors, fol­lo­wing in the foots­teps of our ances­tors and hono­ring a tra­di­tion that is 4,000 years old. »—Le Ly Hayslip, author of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace

« A tho­rough and thought-pro­vo­king account of one of the least-known chap­ters of the Viet Nam War. Taylor’s study of the ’long haired war­riors’ is an essen­tial intro­duc­tion for stu­dents and pro­mi­ses to set the stan­dard for years to come. »—Robert Brigham, author of The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War

« A very valua­ble book for cour­ses on the Vietnam War and in women’s stu­dies. »-Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam War, 1945–1990

Even the Women Must Fight : Memories of War from North Vietnam [1998]

The lite­ra­ture avai­la­ble on the Vietnam War can be overw­hel­ming : libra­ries and archi­ves list hun­dreds of sour­ces that appear to cover nearly every aspect of the war. The most elu­sive topics, howe­ver, are those from the Vietnamese pers­pec­tive. Few of the books consi­de­red stan­dards on the war reflect the North Vietnamese pers­pec­tive, except as seen by American mili­tary offi­cials. Thus Karen Turner makes a wel­come contri­bu­tion not only to gender stu­dies, but also to the lite­ra­ture on the North Vietnamese, with Even the Women Must Fight.

Turner, an East Asia and com­pa­ra­tive law scho­lar, tra­ve­led throu­ghout Vietnam during a three year period. With the assis­tance of Phan Thanh Hao, an inter­pre­ter and jour­na­list from Hanoi, Turner stu­died the role of North Vietnamese women as sol­diers during the Vietnam War. She conduc­ted inter­views with many of the par­ti­ci­pants and their com­ra­des and rea­ding dia­ries and lite­ra­ture from the period, as well as army reports housed in Saigon at the Combined Document Exploitation Center (CDEC).

The author cor­rectly notes the pre­va­lence of female lea­ders in Vietnamese his­tory, exem­pli­fied by such heroi­nes as the Trung sis­ters and Thi Xuan, yet asserts that they « never enjoyed for long the fruits of their strug­gles or chal­len­ged seriously the domi­nant patriar­chal culture » (p. 28). According to Turner, although the govern­ment esta­bli­shed museums and exhi­bits devo­ted to the women’s role, the memoirs and heroi­nes of the Vietnam War sug­gest that women should have « cou­rage in battle without losing their womanly vir­tues » (p. 37). She also indi­ca­tes that the pre­sent Vietnamese govern­ment tries to empha­size the figh­ting spirit of the women war­riors, while down­playing their actual combat skills. Turner also dis­co­ve­red that the posi­tion of Vietnamese fema­les war­riors under­went a post-war mar­gi­na­li­za­tion in Vietnam, as society focu­sed nearly exclu­si­vely on the sacri­fi­ces of their male coun­ter­parts.

One of the most inte­res­ting aspects of Turner’s inquiry was the com­pli­ca­ted rela­tion­ship bet­ween a society bound by Confucian ideals of mothe­rhood and the sub­ser­vient female role and the very real posi­tion of women who are former com­ba­tants who have retur­ned to their homes. Turner seeks to empo­wer the Vietnamese woman by revea­ling their role in the war, dis­cus­sing the effects of their pre­sence on society, and adding what Turner calls « impor­tant insight into time­less moral and phi­lo­so­phi­cal ques­tions about the war » (p. 22). How the women and their com­mu­ni­ties dealt with such issues enga­ged much of the author’s atten­tion.

Turner asserts that many of the female figh­ters who sur­vi­ved now face poverty and neglect, either having missed their oppor­tu­nity to marry while enga­ged in combat, or having become ill, or been expo­sed to che­mi­cals such as Agent Orange (which pre­vent them from bea­ring heal­thy chil­dren). The author iden­ti­fied the para­dox : the war’s par­ti­ci­pants see the efforts of these women as inva­lua­ble, yet with no chil­dren or fami­lies, Vietnamese tra­di­tio­nal society views them as pitia­ble.

Turner iden­ti­fies a number of major topics that war­rant fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, such as how women faced the chal­len­ges of combat and how tra­di­tio­nal Vietnamese society dealt with them as retur­ning sol­diers. Unfortunately the book only tou­ches on many of the author’s ques­tions and a number of the topics could bene­fit from a more sin­gu­lar approach and unin­ter­rup­ted atten­tion. Doubtless Turner’s work is an inva­lua­ble addi­tion to the his­to­rio­gra­phy on Vietnam and on women and war. Her work would make a good reader for an intro­duc­tory Vietnam War course or even as a sup­ple­ment to gra­duate study. The author pro­vi­des a new and approa­cha­ble alter­na­tive to the stan­dard assi­gned texts because it gives not only a female view­point, but also insight into the North Vietnamese pers­pec­tive.

This review was com­mis­sio­ned by Reina Pennington for H-Minerva. Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net and Minerva : Quarterly Report on Women and the Military.